Though Rabbi Menachem Creditor expects diverse crowds to show up for his upcoming parenting classes, he imagines one thing the “students” will have in common: fatigue.

That’s because everyone there — including the rabbi — will have young children. “We’re all gonna be tired, we’re all gonna be distracted,” says Creditor.

“Parenting Matters: Jewish Wisdom for Mindful Parenting” is an eight-week series of classes for parents with children up to age 5. Offered in both Berkeley and San Rafael, it is the inaugural community outreach program of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s Early Childhood Initiative.

Open to Jewish and interfaith parents, the class examines how Jewish texts intersect with parenting issues. “It’s an opportunity for a peer group to get together and join in Jewish learning,” he says. “What brings these parents together is a similar concern to raise children healthily using a Jewish framework.”

This isn’t the first go-round for Creditor when it comes to teaching a Jewish parenting class. He taught a similar class in Boston before moving west to become rabbi at Berkeley’s Congregation Netivot Shalom.

“This is not a seminar,” he says. “It’s really having a conversation with the texts. The topics include the role of the individual in Judaism [and] how to talk to children about God.”

One way, he suggests, is reading to kids at bedtime, perhaps as sacred an hour in the parent-child relationship as any. Creditor recommends an award-winning book, “The Bedtime Sh’ma.”

The classes will culminate in a big family picnic.

Even though he is a learned rabbi and a father of three, Creditor insists he still will be learning along with the other parents who attend the class.

Says Creditor, “Not a day goes by without me being jolted into the awareness that my children make everything I do as a rabbi more meaningful.”

“Parenting Matters” meets 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays beginning April 1 at the Osher Marin JCC, 200 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. An East Bay section meets Mondays at 9:20 a.m. beginning April 7 at Congregation Netivot Shalom, 1316 University Ave., Berkeley. For information, email Vivien Braly at [email protected].